Deer and Forest Research

(door rattling) (door slamming)

(mouse clicking)

- Hi, Sanford Smith here with Penn State Extension.

Today I'm joined by Duane Diefenbach who's a wildlife biologist with the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit of USGS.

Duane, you've been working here in Pennsylvania quite a while, and a lot of your research focuses on deer and forests.

Can you tell us a little bit about the types of research you've been doing?

- Well, we've had a long-term research project that started in 2013 looking at the effects of deer eating vegetation, competing vegetation, things like mountain laurel and fern that outcompete other plants for light and space as well as soil conditions and how those three factors influence the plant communities that we see in our Pennsylvania forests.

- Duane, I know you've been widely recognized by this work and a lot of people really respect the work you've done.

What have been some of the findings of this research?

- Well, there's several different aspects.

One, of course, we're studying deer and with the technology that we have today with GPS collars, we can monitor their movements in detail.

So we've discovered a lot about how deer move, how they respond to human activities like hunting and another part of the project is looking at vegetation.

- [Sanford] When you say vegetation, do you mean the the vegetation on the ground floor, or do you mean the trees?

- Primarily we're looking at what we call the understory so the small trees, the seedlings that are growing as well as the herbaceous vegetation.

That's primarily what we're focused on.

Of course, we measure what's in the overstory, what large trees are present, but for the most part our focus is on plants that are under six feet because that's what deer eat.

- Can you tell me a little bit about where you're doing this research in Pennsylvania and why you're doing it?

- Well, we have four study areas in Pennsylvania.

Two of them are up north in North Central Pennsylvania and those forests up there what we call northern hardwoods that are dominated by maples and birches.

And then we have two other study areas in Central Pennsylvania in what are called the oak hickory forest.

So the predominant tree species are oaks, yellow poplar, hickory, those types of species.

And those are the two major forest types in Pennsylvania.

So that's why we chose those areas.

Our study areas are also located on state forest lands so they're large tracks of forest.

This research is funded by both the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry.

So the game Commission is interested in understanding how deer influence our forests relative to other factors, and the similar for the Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry.

They're also interested in understanding more about how hunters hunt on state forest lands and how they can help manage deer in order to meet the objectives of the Bureau of Forestry.

- Yeah, Duane, something the listeners might not know is that you have many deer that are collared and you're kind of tracking them through the year.

- Right, so on all of our forest study areas each winter January through April, we capture deer, adult deer we fit with radio collars that are GPS collars so they get very accurate locations and we can get a location every hour, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

We also are monitoring the vegetation on our study areas with permanent plots that we visit every other year.

So we have a crew from May through August that goes out to these plots and basically measures all the vegetation that occurs there.

- Just to wrap it up here, can you tell us anything that has been an interesting finding from this or something that you've been, you know, wanting to find out for a while and now you know?

- Well, you know, when we started this project or actually when I started doing research over 20 years ago if you had asked me, you know, what's the biggest problem in our forest, I would say, well, too many deer.

But the game commission over the past 20 years has made a lot of changes in deer management and I would say that's no longer the case.

And in fact, some of our work we're finding is that today factors like soil conditions and vegetation conditions, probably in some places play a bigger role than deer.

- Yeah, that's interesting.

All the work that you do with deer is often featured on a blog that you have which is perhaps the most popular blog in our College of Ag Sciences.

I'm not sure, maybe there's another one but I know it has been.

Many people enjoy going to that blog and learning about your research.

They can see photos as well as sometimes watch the little videos.

So how can someone subscribe to that blog?

- Well, we have a website.

It's very simple.

It's deer.psu.edu, and we have all the information about the research, and we have a place where you can sign up to receive emails notifying you of when a new blog post is posted.

- Well, Duane, thank you very much for joining me today and I hope we can talk to you again sometime soon about how your impact has informed hunters.

- I'd be glad to. (birds chirping)